Google Pixel 7 Pro review: What you need to know before buying
Google’s most refined Pixel yet is just as spectacular as the latest Apple and Samsung phones – and it’s cheaper too.
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GOOGLE PIXEL 7 PRO REVIEW
While Pixel phones are nothing new, Google stated its intention to start playing in the big leagues with the arrival of last year’s Pixel 6 Pro. With its highly impressive camera capabilities and major design shift, it was the first Android phone to make me seriously consider ditching my iPhone.
Now the brand has released the Pixel 7 Pro, which has already cemented itself as a serious rival to the most recent smartphones from Samsung and Apple. While many of its updates are subtle, a powerful new Tensor chip, improved camera functions and sleeker design make the Pixel 7 Pro the best offering from Google yet.
With prices starting from $1,299, the 7 Pro is also significantly cheaper than both the Apple iPhone 14 Pro Max and the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra, making it one of the best smartphones you can currently buy.
PROS
• Gorgeous design
• Highly impressive cameras with great new features
• Snappy performance with Android 13
• Excellent value for money
CONS
• Glossy glass design smudges quickly and isn’t the easiest to hold
• Colour options could be better
• Face Unlock still needs some work
DESIGN
The Pixel 7 Pro is almost identical to last year’s Pixel 6 Pro, with its gorgeous curved OLED display and unique rear camera visor. This time around though, Google has broken up with the two-tone colour design on the back in favour of one colour above and below the camera bar, which makes the phone look a lot classier. It’s also wrapped the camera visor in a polished aluminium that makes the overall design stand out a little more.
Unfortunately, Google didn’t also ditch the glossy back design we saw on the Pixel 6 Pro, which makes the phone harder to hold and more prone to fingerprint smudges. While we heard a lot about the available colour options at Google’s briefing, the brand’s insistence on using this shiny design also leaves colour options like ‘Obsidian’ (Black) and ‘Snow’ (White) looking a little less premium than they should. The standout colour from the range is meanwhile the green/grey ‘Hazel’, though even this could be a little punchier.
The Pixel 7 Pro is still a big phone at 6.7-inches. While this allows for a truly impressive screen, it does still make it a pain to stick in your pockets – especially if you’re wearing women’s pants. At 212 grams though, the phone is surprisingly easy to hold and doesn’t weigh me down when I throw it into a purse or handbag.
Once again, there’s an IP68 rating, which means the Pixel 7 Pro is protected from dust and is water-resistant in freshwater to a maximum depth of 1.5 metres for up to 30 minutes. There’s also Corning Gorilla Glass Victus on the display, which is the same scratch-resistant material we’ve seen on both the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra and the Apple iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max. However, it remains to be seen if the aluminium camera bar was the best choice here as I have been particularly worried about scratching it.
The display itself is bright and sharp, with a 3,120 x 1,440 resolution and a maximum brightness of 1,500-nits. By comparison, the Pixel 6 Pro only had a screen brightness of 800-nits, so I’ve definitely found the 7 Pro much easier to see in direct sunlight. There’s also still a 120Hz refresh rate which feels nice and smooth when moving through the interface.
I’m happy to note the Pixel 7 Pro now comes with face unlock, in addition to the fingerprint scanner. While it doesn’t work as well as my iPhone 13 Pro, it is fairly seamless as long as you’re in decent lighting. In dimmer settings it does tend to struggle a bit, so there’s still some room for improvement here.
SOFTWARE AND PERFORMANCE
The Pixel 7 Pro runs Google’s second-generation Tensor G2 processor, which is more in line with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chip we’ve seen in the majority of Android phones released this year. Not only is the G2 more powerful than past Pixel chipsets, it also offers more AI and machine learning experiences like better speech recognition, faster Night Sight photos and HDR rendering, and lower power consumption when undertaking more demanding activities like recording videos or streaming music.
Navigating through the 7 Pro feels seamless and has been lag-free in my experience, whether I was switching between apps or playing games. In saying that, the most demanding of games may still struggle to run at max settings.
The Pixel 7 Pro also runs the latest Android 13 software, which is both clean and easy to use. It arrives without preinstalled apps on board which makes it feel a bit more streamlined and has helped me to keep things fairly uncluttered. Navigation is still the same, though I’ve found it easier to use the search bar than scroll through to find what I’m looking for. The improved speech recognition features meanwhile shine through, as I’ve found it much simpler to compose speak-to-type messages than in the past.
As with the Pixel 6 line, Google’s Material You also lets you change icon and menu colours to personalise your device if that’s your thing. You can also change the wallpaper directly from the homescreen and create home screens with folders for better organisation, though I personally haven’t found the need.
Google has announced five years worth of security updates for the Pixel 7 Pro too, though it has said it will only be giving it three years worth of Android OS updates. Given that most of us upgrade our phones every few years anyway, this shouldn’t affect the majority of users, but it is still disappointing to see.
CAMERAS
While there’s no denying high-end rivals like the iPhone 14 Pro Max or the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra take some excellent photos, I’ve found you really have to know how to use the settings to get the most out of your shots. Google’s Pixel 6 and 7 lines, on the other hand, have made it stupidly easy to take pro-level shots with basic point-and-shoot.
I was absolutely blown away by the quality of my snaps on the Pixel 6 Pro and the experience is now even more refined on the 7 Pro. AI-led image processing once again means photos come out in vivid colour with incredible detail, while impressive low light performance makes it easy to capture stunning images at night. However, there are some notable updates on the 7 Pro that step things up another notch.
Similar to the 6 Pro, the 7 Pro uses a triple camera array featuring a 50MP main camera, 48MP telephoto and a 12MP ultra wide. This time though, the optical telephoto zoom has been increased from 4x to 5x – and while the zoomed-in photos won’t beat the 10x lens on the Galaxy S22 Ultra, they do surpass the 3x lens on the iPhone 14 Pro. If you take a snap between 2.5x and 5x, the Pixel 7 Pro will also combine images from the main and telephoto camera for a more detailed image.
The Super Res Zoom has meanwhile been extended from 20x to 30x. While images I took closer to the maximum became grainy and overprocessed, those taken at 15x were still nice and sharp.
Flipping the camera around produced great 10MP selfies with plenty of depth in a variety of lighting conditions. I particularly enjoyed the Pixel 7 Pro’s camera set up here, with a double-press of the Power button immediately opening the camera so I could take a quick snap without having to muck around.
Low-light photos are also better than ever, with Night Sight now running at 2x faster than the Pixel 6 line. Not only is capture time quicker, but the image quality is also sharper and more detailed. You can see just how well it picked out the below image, despite also having three different types of lighting in the shot.
The only part of the camera experience I wasn’t totally enamoured with was the new Macro Focus mode. Powered by the ultra wide lens, the mode captures vivid close ups of objects as close as 3cms away. While it definitely delivers great photo clarity very close to a subject, it just doesn’t compare to a professional macro lens at this point in time. The mode is also fully automatic, which means the Pixel 7 Pro switches from the main wide camera to the telephoto camera whenever you get close to a subject.
Personally, I’d prefer this to be a manual option, although some users may prefer the quick change. Overall though, the cameras on the Pixel 7 Pro are phenomenal, making it one of the few phones I’d be happy to take out with me in place of my DSLR.
For those looking to shoot video, there’s also support for recording in 4K at 60fps in HDR and a couple of extra features to improve your footage. The first is Cinematic Blur which, similar to iPhone 13 and above, tracks the subject as you pan the camera while blurring the background for an artsy effect. The other new function is Active Stabilisation, which does a nice job of correcting shaky videos while you’re on the move.
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PHOTO TOOLS
One of the most talked about additions to the Pixel 7 Pro is the Photo Unblur tool. This is an expansion of the Face Unblur technology we saw last year and is used to sharpen blurry and out of focus images. Because it’s built into Google Photos, it actually works on photos you’ve taken with other phones or cameras too, which is a great call.
It works better than I expected it to, bringing more focus and detail to stationary objects or mildly out of focus faces. However, motion shots or severely out of focus shots seem to only get a mild improvement at this stage. Still, it’s a great feature to have even if it isn’t 100 per cent perfect.
While the difference is subtle in the below photo, you can see how using Photo Unblur on the right image brings more clarity and detail to the photo.
Similar in this regard is the Magic Eraser tool we originally saw on the Pixel 6 line. Made to quickly remove unwanted people and objects from your photos, how successful the tool is really depends on what’s in the background of your original image.
For example, you can see below how well the tool worked to remove people when changes to the background behind them aren’t particularly noticeable. While there is a slight disparity to the checkerboard floor, it isn’t that obvious.
In the next set of photos, however, you can see the stairs are too complex for the Pixel 7 Pro to build a believable background in place of the removed subjects.
On a more neutral background, however, you should find that the tool works quite well.
There’s also a couple of extra AI features built into the camera on the Pixel 7 Pro. The first is Top Shot, which takes motion photos and then allows you to pick a favourite snap, giving you more chance of landing that ‘Gram-worthy shot. Then there’s an improved Real Tone function which represents different skin tones more authentically in lowlight settings, which is really fantastic to see.
BATTERY LIFE
Google promised all-day battery life for the Pixel 7 Pro and I have found that to be mostly accurate in my testing. Even on days with heavy usage, I ended up with around 20 to 30 per cent battery life left by the time I was heading to bed. While this does mean you’ll need to charge it each night, this isn’t any different from other smartphones I’ve tested, so I remain fairly satisfied here.
When it does come time to charge, you can hit around 50 per cent battery in around 30-minutes with a 30W charger, while a full charge takes just over an hour. As seems to be standard these days, Google hasn’t provided a charger in the box, though the phone does come with a USB-C cable and an adaptor to transfer data.
SHOULD YOU BUY IT?
The Pixel 7 Pro isn’t just Google’s best phone yet – it’s one of the best Android phones, period. While many of its updates are incremental, it takes an already impressive smartphone model and further refines it, giving it a brighter screen, even more impressive photo capabilities, a more powerful chipset and a decent battery.
It also brings an update to Real Tone, ensuring a wider range of skin tones are accurately represented in photos, and a new Photo Unblur function which is off to a promising start. While some of these features can also be found on the base Pixel 7, when combined with the impressive hardware, the Pixel 7 Pro ends up in the same league as the very best from Samsung and Apple.
The 7 Pro meanwhile remains cheaper than both the Apple iPhone Pro Max and the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra, making it a simply superb value-for-money option.
OVERALL RATING: 4.5/5
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PRICE: The Google Pixel 7 Pro is available in 128GB ($1,299), 256GB ($1,499) and 512GB ($1,599) options.
WHERE TO BUY: The Google Pixel 7 Pro is available to buy now, both outright and on a plan, from retailers including Vodafone, Harvey Norman, Telstra, JB Hi-Fi and the Google Store.
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